1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of telecommunications and, more particularly, to a publicly accessible registry listing telecommunication services.
2. Description of the Related Art
Telecommunication (telecom) companies offer customers numerous telecom services, such as caller ID, voice mail, and three way calling, either singularly or as part of a telecom package. As sales and usage of personal telecom devices, such as cellular telephones and personal data assistants (PDAs), have increased, the demand for telecom services has escalated. Unfortunately, the marketplace for telecom services has not kept pace with increasing consumer demands.
One reason the supply for telecom services has failed to fulfill the demand can originate from the manner in which telecom services are implemented. Generally, telecom services are developed specifically for a particular telecom switch. Development of new services typically requires specialized personnel having a significant amount of experience in programming a particular telecom switch upon which a telecom service is to be implemented. Further adding to the cost of telecom service development, is the fact that telecom services are not easily ported from one type of telecom switch to another. Consequently, similar and like features must be redesigned for each switch.
Moreover, a confused marketplace exists for telecommunication services. First, no agreed upon standardized set of terms or phrases describing telecom services exists through which meaningful comparisons among services can be made. Additionally, an existing customer base has been trained to select packages of telecom services instead of choosing among individual telecom services capable of suiting individual requirements. In consequence, consumers do not request individual telecom services in a competitive fashion.
Telecom carriers also lack the ability to exchange and transfer individual services among themselves responsive to consumer demand. For example, suppose a first telecom service provider supplied a three way calling service desirable to a selected business, but that business needed caller ID features which are not available through the first telecom provider. Absent some third party bundling of a caller ID feature to be included with the first provider's telecom service, the business would not be able to utilize the desirable three way calling service. Similarly, customers transferring from one telecom carrier to another are typically forced to discontinue telecom services proven satisfactory, merely because such services are not supported by the new telecom carrier.
Many industry leaders have directed efforts that focus upon expanding the portability of telecom services and increasing the pool of available developers. For example, such standardization efforts as Intelligent Networks (IN), Advanced Intelligent Networks (AIN) and Java Advanced Intelligent Network (JAIN®) focus upon providing a telecom architecture that separates service logic from switching equipment. While these efforts enhance telecom services portability, the efforts do little to create a marketplace wherein suppliers of telecom services can present telecom products to customers.